Jim Delarge

Jim Delarge derives a certain pleasure from disconcerting his audience through continual self renewal. In addition to his usual, yet essential treatment of his primordial stew, he introduces the most stereotyped elements of our modern culture such as cartoon characters on LSD and mixes all these elements together with current world events.

Like many of his contemporaries, he samples and diverts, ultimately obtaining a hybridisation, held together by confronting us with discomfort, injecting life into the bizarre and creating witnesses out of his audience. The virtuosity of Jim Delarge’s technique is clear. Not only does he posses an extremely unique stylistic assertion, with extraordinary variation throughout his work, he demonstrates endless possibilities of graphic expression in his attempt to understand the world through conflict. Jim Delarge surrenders to his imagination, to the bizarre nuances of his instinct to hollow out a collective unconsciousness. He equalises a number of antagonising forces.

Turning one’s attention to the apparent absurdity in his titles, after having seen there is much to interpret, read or lose sight of in his conjectures, there are also in fact, many latent messages present, many subliminal images, flaws and projections to encourage the audience’s imagination to create the effect of previously hidden meanings. Everything’s an act. Everything is out of balance. As such, very dynamic. Equally, Delarge avoids moving towards self-expression.

He continually evolves in this area, while remaining in the shelter of his own impulses. Jim Delarge works at distancing himself from himself, maybe to simply help him co-exist. It could even be speculated that what makes Jim Delarge paint is the impossibility of speech. Everything works cyclically. This is mannerism. Nothing is obvious. Everything is aggressively articulated. Nothing will be told as-is. Everything will change. There is one who mimics superficiality, placing everything in clear view, to conjure up another dimension.